Conversion Strategy Results and the One Page You MUST Include an Opt-In Form On

By Pat Flynn on September 12, 2011

In today’s post, I’ll be comparing the number of people who subscribed to my email list on various locations on The Smart Passive Income Blog before and after I implemented a simple strategy recommended to me in Derek Halpern’s SPI conversion strategy video.

To summarize what Derek suggested, I was definitely not giving myself the best chance to obtain the most subscribers. I only had opt-in forms located in the sidebar and beneath each post, and that’s it.

He suggested that I add opt-in forms on some the pages of my site which are accessible from the navigation menu at the top. These are pages that people are most likely visiting, so it would be smart to put opt-in forms in front of the people who visit them.

Google In-Page Analytics (the numbers show the % of visitors who click through to that specific page)

I felt that the other pages already served another purpose that might conflict with an email opt-in form. For example, the Resource Page, which includes a number of affiliate links, should only focus on the products, services and tools that I recommend, and the Podcast Page already has subscription links to subscribe to the podcast.

I added the new opt-in forms on August 1st. Before then, I was averaging about 47 new subscribers a day, for a total of 1475 new subscribers for the month of July.

In August, subscribership increased 30.24% to 1921 total subscribers, or about 62 subscribers a day – a increase that will make a huge difference over the longrun.

For example, at the old rate of 47 subscribers a day, in a year I would gain 17,155 new subscribers.

At the new rate of 62 subscribers a day, I would gain 22,630 new subscribers in a year. That’s 5,475 additional subscribers!

Specific Locations – Before and After

Below is a list of the specific locations on SPI where people can subscribe, plus the total number of subscribers for July, August, and the % difference. I can find out this information by using Aweber’s[Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.]search subscriber tool:

Note: The traffic to each of these pages was relatively the same between July and August.

August: 317 (increased 40% – mostly because the traffic of this particular

Comment Checkbox (the checkbox in the comment field in all blog posts. See Subscriber’s Magnet to learn more about this plugin.) [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.]

July: 60

August: 67 (increased 12%)

Other (various posts, using the sidebar on SPI)

July: 240

August: 188 (decreased 22%)

Totals:

July: 1475

August: 1921 (increased 30%)

Summary

From the changes I made, adding an opt-in form to the About Page has increased the number of subscribers the most (by far!) and this makes perfect sense.

The About Page serves to describe who I am and what my site is about. It’s one of the most visited pages in my navigation menu and it doesn’t include links, resources or any other calls to action, so having an option to learn more about what I do through a newsletter after reading (and hopefully being interested in) what my site is about, is perfect.

The forms I added to the Video Page and Income Reports Page did help, but not as much as the About Page – probably because those pages include other things to click on and are there for. Again, the About Page does not.

It’s smart to put opt-in forms in several different places, but if you’re only going to add one more, it should be on your About Page. Most people are not doing this at all. Some people include links to a page that includes an opt-in form, but it’s best to cut out that extra step and just put another form directly on the About Page.

Derek even mentions adding multiple opt-in forms on each page, which I did not do. That was a personal decision based on how I felt about crowding a particular page, although I’m sure that would increase the number of subscribers even more – so feel free to experiment with that as well.

For me, it’s not all about the numbers. If it was I would also include a pop-up when people visit the site to capture even more subscribers (they absolutely DO work!) but that’s not the experience I want people to have when they arrive at my blog.

Your website is your own and you’re free to do what you want with it, however I suggest not missing out on the potential number of subscribers that you could gain by adding just a few more opt-in forms to pages and posts where you know visitors are going.

Thanks again to Derek for the helpful tips. If you have yet to watch the original conversion strategy video, I highly recommend it.